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This paper presents the results of a pilot study that introduces social robots into kindergarten and first-grade classroom tasks. This study aims to understand 1) how effective social robots are in administering educational activities and…
Socially assistive robotics (SAR) research has shown great potential for supplementing and augmenting therapy for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, the vast majority of SAR research has been limited to short-term…
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can profoundly affect reciprocal social communication, resulting in substantial and challenging impairments. One aspect is that for people with ASD conversations in everyday life are challenging due to…
Robots have great potential to facilitate future therapies for children on the autism spectrum. However, existing robots lack the ability to automatically perceive and respond to human affect, which is necessary for establishing and…
Atypical gaze behavior is a diagnostic hallmark of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), playing a substantial role in the social and communicative challenges that individuals with ASD face. This study explores the impacts of a month-long,…
Despite growing interest in Learning-by-Teaching (LbT), few studies have explored how this paradigm can be implemented with autonomous, peer-like social robots in real classrooms. Most prior work has relied on scripted or Wizard-of-Oz…
Affect-aware socially assistive robotics (SAR) tutors have great potential to augment and democratize professional therapeutic interventions for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) from different socioeconomic backgrounds.…
From dating to job interviews, making new friends or simply chatting with the cashier at checkout, engaging in small talk is a vital, everyday social skill. For adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), small talk can be particularly…
Animal welfare education could greatly benefit from customized robots to help children learn about animals and their behavior, and thereby promote positive, safe child-animal interactions. To this end, we ran Participatory Design workshops…
Social interactions increasingly involve artificial agents, such as conversational or collaborative bots. Understanding trust and prosociality in these settings is fundamental to improve human-AI teamwork. Research in biology and social…
Trust plays a central role in human--robot collaboration, yet its formation is rarely examined under the constraints of fully autonomous interaction. This pilot study investigated how interaction policy influences trust during in-person…
This article describes the preliminary qualitative results of a therapeutic laboratory involving the Pepper robot, as a facilitator, to promote autonomy and functional acquisition in autistic children with low support needs (level 1…
The sense of family connectedness may support positive outcomes including individual well-being, resilience, and healthy family functioning. However, as technologies advance, they often replace human-human interactions instead of nurturing…
Robots capable of participating in complex social interactions have shown great potential in a variety of applications. As these robots grow more popular, it is essential to continuously evaluate the dynamics of the human-robot…
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience challenges in grasping social-emotional cues, which can result in difficulties in recognizing emotions and understanding and responding to social interactions. Social-emotional…
Social communication between people and social robots has been studied extensively and found to have various notable benefits, including the enhancement of human-robot team cohesion and the development of rapport and trust. However, the…
In an exploratory study on educational child-robot interaction we investigate the effect of alternating a learning activity with an additional shared activity. Our aim is to enhance and enrich the relationship between child and robot by…
In recent years, much focus has been put on employing technology to make novel behavioural aids for those with autism. Most of these are digital adaptations of tools used in standard behavioural therapy to enforce normative skills. These…
Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbots powered by a large language model (LLM) are entering young children's learning and play, yet little is known about how young children construe these agents or how such construals relate to engagement.…
Social-emotional learning (SEL) skills are essential for children to develop to provide a foundation for future relational and academic success. Using art as a medium for creation or as a topic to provoke conversation is a well-known method…